Obama to gun-control petitioners: “We hear you”

posted at 2:46 pm on December 21, 2012 by Allahpundit

Three minutes of video that have less to do with pushing specific policies to reduce gun violence than pushing his supporters to keep up the pressure. One of O’s biggest obstacles in passing something is the public’s notoriously short attention span after a mass shooting. If the White House couldn’t get something through Congress after one of its own members was shot in the head by a lunatic, odds that they’ll get something passed in January, after a long holiday break and more fiscal-cliff clusterfarkery, are low. (Then again, Obama never really tried to pass something after Tucson because, as always, his reelection was more important to him than gun control.) He needs an all-hands-on-deck public pressure campaign by O-bots to keep the heat on, if only so that he can better demagogue Republicans later — the Clinton playbook — for failing to Do Something when the bill fails in the House.

Have a look at Pew’s new poll today to see just how tenuous his position is. Less than a week after 20 kids were killed, he still can’t get to 50 percent on whether it’s more important to “control gun ownership” than protect gun rights. Twenty years ago, 45% said the NRA had too much influence over gun laws; today, just 36% say so. (The number who say the NRA has either too little influence or the right amount exceeds the number who say it has too much.) This is a rare cultural issue on which opinion has become more conservative over time, enough so that O’s worried that even the bully pulpit and a national burst of grief over murdered children won’t be enough to deliver policy change. They might have enough momentum to get a very modest bill done; if they focused exclusively on high-capacity magazines or hollow-point bullets, they might peel off enough Republicans in the House to make it happen. But Obama’s already invested too much rhetorically in something bigger so he’s obviously playing a longer game of getting the House GOP to spike a new assault-weapons ban and then hoping it helps deliver the House back to Pelosi in 2014.

One silver-y lining for Democrats from Pew, though: On this issue as with so many others, younger voters are firmly in their corner.

With the glaring exception of seniors, those demographics break just as you’d expect given the results of the national exit poll in November. But as I say, young voters are the key. Heavy gun regulation is impossible now but, unless something changes, might not be in another 10-20 years. Gun rights advocates had better ramp up their outreach to them, replete with efforts to encourage ownership (which correlates strongly with support for gun rights, as you might expect), to make them more comfortable with guns or else trouble’s on the way.

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Does Obama understand people are buying guns like there’s no tomorrow because they’re scared to death of him and his communist cronies?

darwin on December 21, 2012 at 3:36 PM

Absolutely they do. They’re sleepless about it, desperately in a rush to find a way to stop us from doing so. Clueless that THEY are driving the pace of it with their incessant talk of bans and confiscation and constitution-violating ex post facto laws.

It’s always been my opinion that 99% of the anti-gun crowd are the one’s that have never owned/seen/shot a gun in their entire lives. They’re absolutely convinced brainwashed that if there’s a gun in the house, it’s GOING to compel everyone within a 1000 yard radius to pick it up and shoot some one..or just fall off a shelf and murder every one in the house.

You are the 1%.

BigWyo on December 21, 2012 at 3:16 PM

If I would have added ‘sniveling, handwringing, bed wetting twat…this would be a case in point…

if only people had been armed, this shooting would have never happened.

sesquipedalian on December 21, 2012 at 3:22 PM

People *were* armed, and there’s not *more* dead, you f*ckwit. That’s precisely the point – he had to stop killing people when someone shot his ass to death, GOT IT? ‘Bad guy with gun’ was stopped by ‘good guy with gun’.

The only group of people liberals don’t seem to want to disarm. When an innocent bystander is killed by gang violence, no lib gets up and says we need to get illegal guns out of people’s hands and start demanding police ‘do something about it’–like sweeps of neighborhoods known to have high levels of gang violence and illegal weapons. I bet the cops would land a treasure trove of real assault rifles that are military-issue.

That is an absolutely ridiculous article. He made up his own variables on things like “inequality”, “quality of life”, added a “creative class” variable, chose to single out states based on whether they had any firearms laws “to protect children” (as opposed to people generally, I guess). Who made this?

So about that kid beaten to death in Chicago with a 2×4 for wearing the wrong color shirt, the fault of the NRA, yes?

Bishop on December 21, 2012 at 4:12 PM
Obviously the fault of Home Depot.

CurtZHP on December 21, 2012 at 4:14 PM

I think the kid beaten today had it coming. He actually went to class and paid attention. Some of the obama supporting animals took offense to this and beat him to death while 50 or so other subhumans stoop around and whooped it up and videotaped it.

Too bad that kid didn’t call 911. that would have solved all the problems.

I was just at the local gun shop. It was packed. No available parking space and people were lined up to buy, shoot and add to their gun collections. Just who is he hearing besides the voices in his head?

I assume they aren’t doing it because they suddenly developed an urge to hunt deer or realized at last they need some self protection. I suspect many have other reasons…perhaps some knowledge of civics and how our government is supposed to work.

That dude stabbed two people in Chicago. Someone really needs to petition the White House to restrict all Walmarts from selling those 12-knife butcher block sets as they are all tragedies waiting to happen.

That dude stabbed two people in Chicago. Someone really needs to petition the White House to restrict all Walmarts from selling those 12-knife butcher block sets as they are all tragedies waiting to happen.

If you people were really so worried about gun violence, you would care that Obama sent 1,500 or more guns into Mexico to be used by criminals for drug trafficking, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people. You have no moral authority here.